Echoes of a daring mission

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LAGUNA BEACH For years, I've heard about how fast the World War II veterans are dying.

And they are, at a rate of nearly 1,500 a day, by my calculations using Department of Veterans Affairs data.

Each week, another 10,000 are gone. Each year, another half-million are buried.

Soon, they'll all be gone.

And when that happens, what I saw last week will be lost forever.

You've probably never heard of Bob Sternfels.

But 70 years ago, he took part in one of the most daring bombing runs of World War II: the Ploesti Raid.

“We were like ducks in a shooting gallery,” Sternfels, 92, of Laguna Beach recalls. “The Germans had their guns all warmed up. Oh, it was terrible.”

The morning of Aug. 1, 1943, 178 bombers took off from Benghazi, North Africa, on a mission so vital that Commanding Gen. Uzal Ent said, “If no one comes back, it'll be worth the cost.”

Only 33 planes returned unscathed.

Some call Ploesti the most heroic raid in aviation history.

Some call it the beginning of the end of World War II.

Some call Sternfels a hero deserving the Medal of Honor.

Yet, as the 70th anniversary of the Ploesti Raid neared, it looked like Sternfels would spend it at home.

Alone.

The oil refineries of Ploesti, Romania, supplied one-third of Germany's total petroleum needs and most of its high-octane airplane fuel during World War II. Stop the pipeline, many thought, and you'd stop the war.

So the U.S. devised a secret plan to send 1,700 airmen on a 2,700-mile mission, requiring extra fuel tanks in their bomb bays. To ensure precision, pilots were ordered to drop bombs not from the usual 5 to 6 miles high, but from just 200 feet off the ground.

The night before, men were told to write letters home. In the morning, they were fed eggs. Real eggs. Everyone knew they might not return.

By the time Sternfels piloted the Sandman, his B-24 bomber, over one refinery, “everything was happening” – smoke, flames, propeller wash from other planes, anti-aircraft fire.

“I couldn't see the ground through the smoke,” he says. “If I dipped my wing too far, I would've clipped a smokestack.”

He dodged the smokestack – into the path of a steel cable tethering a large balloon to a bomb.

He approached it at 250 mph.

“I thought, ‘Holy heck,' ” he says. “I banked the plane and prayed.”

“Can you join us for breakfast?”

The man asking is Jim Baker, 75, the youngest pup in a group of veterans who call themselves the “Grateful Generation” and meet weekly in Laguna Woods.

Baker, a former Air Force pilot, regularly drives the older guys to meetings, visits those in the hospital and records stories on video.

“It's the 70th anniversary of Ploesti,” he says. “Could you write something about Bob?”

“I've already written about your group,” I explain.

“It was the biggest event in his life. His picture was in Life magazine,” he says.

“I've heard all the stories,” I say.

Baker pleads. “If you don't, the world will never know.”

“I'll think about it,” I say.

That's when I look up the rate at which World War II guys are dying: 10,000 a week.

Sternfels pushes a walker through his ocean view home in Laguna Beach.

“I've got new hips, new knees, a new shoulder and I can't hear too well either,” jokes the great-grandfather, who three years ago lost his wife of 67 years.

He's telling me how he survived the Ploesti Raid: He flew so close to the German 88 mm anti-aircraft guns that they couldn't get a bead on him. And that steel cable set up as a booby trap? His No. 3 engine gobbled it up and spit it out. The bomb never exploded.

“Ploesti was the first day of the end of World War II,” he says, digging out his 2002 Ploesti book, “Burning Hitler's Black Gold.”

“We denied Hitler some of the fuel he needed to operate.”

It also was the most highly decorated single mission in aviation history. Five pilots were given the Medal of Honor. Every airman was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross.

Sternfels planned to fly to Ohio this month for a reunion with Ploesti survivors.

“They wanted me to be the keynote speaker,” he says.

But leg surgery in May left him unable to attend. As it's left him unable to attend local meetings of the “Grateful Generation.”

So there we sit in his kitchen, two days before the raid's 70th anniversary, looking at his calendar of doctors' appointments and regimen of pain pills.

With no plans.

Finally, it's the 70th anniversary of the Ploesti Raid, and I'm watching the remnants of the “Grateful Generation” filter into the Las Palmas assisted living center in Laguna Woods.

A decade ago, they met at Coco's Bakery Restaurant in aviator jumpsuits and leather jackets, as many as 30 a week. Now they're lucky to get eight, including wives, children and men from other wars.

In come the survivors, the last men standing from World War II: Ted Tanner, Herb Guiness, Dick Tyhurst and Jack Hammett, all in their 90s. Jim Baker, who stopped on the way to pick up one more, is now pushing his walker through the door.

“That's why I never scratched an airplane,” Sternfels says, maneuvering through a space with less than an inch of clearance on either side.

Over eggs and coffee, they trade stories. And friendly barbs.

“I refuse to get old,” one says.

“Get old? You
are old,” another says.

“Would you push your chair closer to me?” one says.

“I'm not sure I want to,” another says.

“We got a lot of guys who say, ‘I won the war,' but what you did comes closer to winning the war than anything we did,” one finally says to Sternfels, who replies: “I gotta correct you. It didn't ‘come close.' It
was the reason!”

It might seem like a small thing – breakfast with friends. But these are the last echoes from World War II. And that's too bad, I finally realize.

Because it won't be long before these last men standing are gone, closing one of the most important chapters in U.S. history.

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